Such figures can help us better understand cycling risk. They may even help us feel a little better about cycling in traffic. But looking too closely at the numbers can also serve to distance us from the everyday human reality behind them.

Arzu Baglar was more than the just first number in Victoria’s cycling fatality count for 2017. Her recent death on that inner city Melbourne intersection changed everything for the people around her. The truck driver and the people around him will be impacted by this tragedy too.

Life has changed forever for everyone involved.

Wider changes

Beyond the impact on family and friends, what actually changes when a cyclist dies on our roads? Does anything really change for anyone else?

Fortunately for cyclists though, there are others trying to bring about change in this area. Greens Senator Janet Rice this week called on the Turnbull government to invest $250 million each year in cycling infrastructure to improve rider safety across Australia.

Rice is a long time cycling advocate whose recent calls were prompted by Arzu Baglar’s death.

Better planning, policy, and action on road design to enhance road user safety is of course crucial. Separated bike lanes, bicycle pathways and other hard infrastructure solutions are part of the cycling accident prevention picture.

Road law reform in the area of safe passing distances, and perhaps measures like side under-run guardrails on trucks are also important. But these measures alone will not solve the entire problem.

What can individuals do?

The challenge of road user safety also comes down to individual road user attitudes and decisions, and our actual behaviour when moving about on public roads.

Memorial ride for Arzu Baglar, 13 March 2017.

When a cyclist dies on our roads, the lives of their loved ones change forever.

When a cyclist dies, the rest of us can make changes too. We can actively choose to change how we use the road on every single trip we take.

We can choose to go a little slower, to turn our phone off, and to stop at those amber lights instead of gunning through when we think no one is watching. We can choose to be more observant of the other road users around us. We can also choose to wait those few precious seconds for the other road user in front of us.

To make changes like these isn’t difficult. As the old saying goes, they’re much like riding a bike…..once mastered, never forgotten.

Arzu Baglar’s sad passing is closer than you may realise.

If you have ever cycled on the road, then Arzu Baglar is you. If you have ever driven on a road where people are riding bicycles, then the truck driver from that terrible Friday fourteen days ago is you too.

Many years ago, when I was a young driver in the UK I read a story in the Automobile Association’s magazine which still remains with me 50 years later. It concerned a motorist who hit and killed a pedestrian near a pedestrian crossing. He was cleared of negligence but said it was only because a police officer told him to move his car around the corner that he could bring himself to continue to drive again. He also said he was unable to bring himself to drive down that particular stretch of road for a couple of years. Often as I drive down a busy road I ask myself, what if that child steps into the road, or that cyclist turns into my path. It slow me up immediately. As you say, accidents impact so many people.